William Dorsey's Philadelphia and Ours: On the Past and Future of the Black City in America

Part I
THE MEDIUM AND THE MESSAGE:
THE DORSEY COLLECTION
AND THE BLACK PORTRAIT
IN THE POPULAR PRESS

Much of black urban history is still murky simply because of the scarcity of
records needed to reconstruct it. During the 19th century certainly, blacks
as historical actors were scarcely visible to the dominant white population,
clearly not in charge of the major political and economic decisions that
shaped their lives. Most, too, did not leave the kind of formally written
sources, letters, diaries, and reminiscences, of which traditional history is
built. But while there are some of the same gaps in the Philadelphia story as
in those of other cities, it can be told better than most because of several
unique advantages. W. E. B. Du Bois, who published his great study of The
Philadelphia Negro in 1899, is only the best known of a series of observers
who have traced the black experience from colonial times to the present.
But for the raw material of history nothing is more important than the
unique collections left by the members of the American Negro Historical
Society, above all its custodian William Henry Dorsey.
1

Dorsey was named the Society's "custodian" perhaps because his own
contributions were central to it, certainly bigger than those of any other
member. Some aspects of his life, and his family's, remain as obscure as
those of other and less eminent urban blacks. As much as can be known will
be woven, with his neighbors', throughout this book, as part of the
occupational, political, religious, and cultural history his legacy has enabled. But its outlines are appropriate here, in the introduction to Part I, as

Notes for this page

Questia, a part of Gale, Cengage Learning. www.questia.comPublication information:
Book title: William Dorsey's Philadelphia and Ours:On the Past and Future of the Black City in America.
Contributors: Roger Lane - Author.
Publisher: Oxford University Press.
Place of publication: New York.
Publication year: 1991.
Page number: 1.

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